Photo: Bravo
I’ve always said that Southern Charm is a show about awful men and the women who tolerate them, but with each passing season, it seems like the women become more and more irrelevant. Being a woman on this show has always been more treacherous than Miss Patricia’s one loop around the block in her Rolls-Royce. In the early years, it struggled for Cameran to have anything to do other than narrate the “previously on …,” and even though Madison is one of the great reality-television practitioners on Bravo, she’s had little to nothing to do since her breakup with Austen and détente with Shep.
But it’s getting even worse. Salley and Taylor aren’t seen in the episode at all other than Taylor quite literally cleaning her house in the very opening moments of the episode. Poor Molly, our sweet, sweet Molly, only gets a scene where she’s modeling in a swimming pool for a Charleston purse brand. You know she didn’t get paid for this gig. Even Molly admits there is no work for models in Charleston, so — much like all the women imagining that Jonathan Bailey will go down on them — it’s a cute fantasy, but I don’t see it happening in real life.
Of all the slighted women, however, Venita has it the worst. The episode opens with the sort of humiliation that no one would want recorded for posterity or presented to the public. She has the absolute shame of having to call Leva and tell her that she was rejected by JT, a man whose entire Instagram feed is crypto scams. God, that has to sting. What’s even worse is that you know JT was always a “maybe” for Venita. She was always on the fence and then he showed some attraction, so she was like, “Okay. Maybe.” But then she goes for it, and he is like, “No,” and she just wants to be like, “You were only a maybe in the first place, and now this maybe is giving no? Please!”
Leva is definitely among the slighted women here, but she earns her paycheck when reacting to Venita’s news over the phone. “I’m so mad at this loser. That is not cool at all,” she says when she finds out that JT dissed Venita because he has a girlfriend. Who is this girlfriend? None of you have met her. You wouldn’t know her. She lives in Canada, our 51st state. Then Leva adds, “I’m sorry that happened. Oh gawd, ew.” And I’m not even getting funky spelling it “gawd”; that is what the subtitles did for us on the screen. That is the great overlords at Bravo themselves saying to Venita, “Sorry we put you through this. You deserve hazard pay. Can we set you up with Captain Jason?”
The rest of the episode then was about the boys, particularly because Miss Patricia hosted her annual gentlemen’s dinner. There was only one scene where the guys talked about their relationships with each other, and that was when Austen went to do oyster shooters with Madison in the middle of the day. He says he loves hanging out with her now that she treats him like her “GBF” or “gay best friend.” Sorry, Austen, but that is not what being a GBF is like. It involves way more shopping, way more Bravo gossip, and definitely way more dong talk than most ladies would like to acknowledge. Madison isn’t treating him like he’s gay; she’s treating him like a straight guy who she is never going to have sex with again. Maybe the difference between Madison and all the other ladies Austen has Platonic relationships with is that Austen also knows he will never have a shot with her again. That might be his secret to having female friends, to realize he’s never getting to the promised land no matter how hard he prays, so everything else can just be shots and feelings talks.
The rest of the scenes with the guys, however, are about their relationships with their ladies. Craig and Paige go to a bee farm because Craig wants to turn his home into Southfork Ranch or some shit. He wants chickens, he wants goats, he wants cornfields fertilized by his very own compost. Sadly, his “community” won’t allow him any of this, so the only animals he can get are bees. Too bad Paige hates bees. She also hates animals. She hates farms. She hates Charleston. She hates Craig.
That might not be true. In all honesty, I couldn’t really pay attention to anything that Paige was saying in that whole scene because Craig’s arms were looking absolutely astonishing under his gray T-shirt. I don’t think she hates Craig, but the fight they have at the farm puts their impending breakup in perspective. I think Paige’s best point is that she is sick of having to deal with all of this talk about babies and marriage at 31 when Craig never had to deal with it. Preach, sister. But while there might be something she can do about her relationship and the questions her partner has for her, I think dismantling centuries of religious doctrine and misogyny to address equality in heterosexual relationships is beyond the remit of both her and the show. We also know they are heading for a bust-up, so it’s not like we need to dig for signs when she has spelled out the obvious answer for us many times.
It’s a bit more treacherous with Shep and Sienna. The show has planned its whole big trip around Shep going to visit his girlfriend in the Bahamas, but she seems like she would much rather do anything — clean her gutters, renew her license, have a quick elective surgery — than hang out with Shep and the crew. He FaceTimes her and thanks her for hosting them in advance. “Um, what day are you coming?” she asks. Okay, that is the answer of someone who does not care. He asks if he’s going to get to meet her family while he’s down there. “They’re all in different places,” she, a woman who does not care, says. Then he asks if she has anything planned. “Mmm. For sure,” she says both while not caring and doing the most cursory of ChatGPT itineraries for a bunch of reality stars visiting her homeland.
It’s clear to everyone around them that Sienna has very little interest in carrying on this relationship. When Shep says that they say, “I love you,” Austen says that she only said it to keep Shep on the hook for whatever reason she wants to. I totally believe that. At the gentlemen’s dinner, Shep says that she’s hard to get a hold of because she has so much going on, but on FaceTime, she told him, “I have lots of free time.” Right. She seems to be making it pretty clear that she has the time to talk to Shep; she just might not have the inclination.
At dinner, Whitney takes it a little bit too far, which might have something to do with the slur in Whitney’s voice that started even before he broke one of his mother’s antique chairs. He tells Shep that he’s not rich, exciting, or famous enough for Sienna, and that’s the problem. Way harsh, Tai, but also it seems like it’s more and more of the truth each time we meet Sienna. Whitney also tells Shep that she reached out to him on Raya first, but then he says he never texted her. So, yes, they matched, but until contact was made and a date set, I don’t think this really constitutes as anything. If everyone I messaged “Hey, handsome” to on Grindr was off limits, then my friends would not be able to talk to a single man between five-six and six-one-million” and the ages of 23 and 94 in any major metropolitan area in the United States, Europe, or Brazil.
It seems like once the gang gets to her island, things are going to get even worse for Shep. Honestly, after all the shit he’s pulled with women over the years, I’m more than a little happy for him to get a bit of comeuppance.
